Netanyahu Tells Inquiry Israel Acted in Self-Defense

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the lead-off witness as the five-member panel led by former Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel -- plus two foreign observers -- starts hearings some two months after the May 31 incident that provoked widespread international condemnation of Israel. Photographer: Mark Wilson/Pool via Bloomberg

Netanyahu also said during an hour of public testimony
today that he tried in vain to persuade Turkey to stop the ship
from confronting Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza and avoid the
prospect of violent conflict. Once Israel’s strongest ally in
the region, Turkey has frozen diplomatic and security ties with
Israel since the raid.

“Apparently, the Turkish government didn’t see that a
possible incident between Turkish activists and Israel was
against their interests,” Netanyahu said at the hearing in
Jerusalem. He later testified for two hours behind closed doors.

Netanyahu was the lead-off witness as the five-member panel
began its review of the May 31 raid, which provoked widespread
international condemnation and led Israel to loosen its blockade
of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
called the shootings “barbaric.”

The commission, which is led by former Supreme Court
Justice Jacob Turkel and includes two foreign observers, will
examine the interplay of military and political decision making
before the raid and its legality. Israel agreed last week to
cooperate with a United Nations investigation into the incident,
reversing its previous refusal to work with an international
investigation.

UN Investigation

The UN panel, led by former New Zealand Prime Minister
Geoffrey Palmer and former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe,
will hold its first meeting tomorrow in New York. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said there are no constraints on the panel’s
ability to interview Israeli soldiers.

“The panel may decide what steps they need to take.” Ban
told reporters at a press conference in New York today.

An Israeli military inquiry concluded July 12 that faulty
planning and intelligence failures contributed to the violence.
The panel, headed by reserve Major-General Giora Eiland, said
commandos from the elite “Shayetet 13” unit dropped from
helicopters onto the aid ships before dawn, expecting little
resistance from passengers.

That was how it turned out aboard five of the ships. On the
sixth, the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces were beaten, stabbed and
shot after hitting the deck, according to Eiland’s report. Seven
were wounded, including by gunfire, after people aboard one of
the ships managed to grab Israeli firearms, the report said.

Pro-Palestinian Turkish activists aboard the ship said they
threw the firearms into the sea and that the Israelis instigated
the violence.

International Law

In the course of his testimony, facing the inquiry panel
while sitting at a desk on a small raised platform, Netanyahu
insisted that Israel adhered to international law in its
blockade of Gaza and interception of the flotilla.

“The political echelon imposed the blockade and the
military echelon enforced it,” he said. “I asked that the
confrontation be minimized as much as possible and that a
supreme effort be made to avoid harming anyone.”

Because he was visiting Canada at the time of the raid and
was heading to Washington for talks with President Barack Obama
-- a meeting that was postponed to handle fallout from the
killings -- Netanyahu said he left Defense Minister Ehud Barak
as the “single address” to deal with all aspects of the
mission. The two leaders once served in the same elite commando
unit.

‘Overall Responsibility’

Netanyahu’s office issued a clarification two hours after
he finished testifying, saying that “as prime minister, the
overall responsibility is always my own, whether I’m in the
country or abroad and thus it was in this incident.”

Israeli engaged in intense diplomatic efforts throughout
May with several countries that had citizens aboard the
flotilla, or those with ports that the ships might use, to try
and prevent the vessels from heading to Gaza, Netanyahu told the
commission.

“Because of the importance I placed on Turkey’s central
role in the flotilla, my office worked directly to assist in the
diplomatic effort with Turkey,” Netanyahu said.

Turkey has demanded an apology for the deaths of its
citizens.

Netanyahu said the soldiers who boarded the Mavi Marmara
acted “in self-defense out of genuine danger to their lives.”

Following Netanyahu in the witness chair tomorrow will be
Barak, with Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israel
military chief of staff, appearing before the panel the next
day.

International Observers

David Trimble, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from Northern
Ireland, and Ken Watkin, a former judge advocate general of
Canada’s armed forces, are on the commission as non-voting
international observers.

Israel earlier shunned a UN panel led by former UN
prosecutor and South African judge Richard Goldstone that
investigated the 2008 Gaza war. Goldstone’s panel, appointed by
the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, accused Israel and
Hamas of war crimes and called on them to investigate the
charges.

Netanyahu yesterday named Joseph Ciechanover, former
director-general of the Foreign Ministry and chairman of El Al
Israel Airlines Ltd., as the government’s representative to the
UN panel, which also includes former Turkish diplomat Ozdem
Sanberk.

Blockade Imposed

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade of Gaza after the
Islamic Hamas movement ousted forces loyal to Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group and seized full
control of the territory in 2007. Hamas, which won Palestinian
parliamentary elections the previous year, is considered a
terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and
Israel.

Palestinians, backed by the UN and human-rights groups,
said restrictions on food imports and construction materials
created a humanitarian crisis. Israel says it restricts imports
of building materials to Gaza because they can be used to build
rockets, bunkers or bombs. Officials said they were also
concerned about weapons being hidden in food packaging.

The Israeli government said June 20 it would loosen the
blockade for shipments by road so that all food will be let in
and only weapons and items with a possible military use are kept
out.

Netanyahu told the commission that there was no
humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He said while the May 31 raid
wasn’t the main cause of Israel lifting its restrictions on the
Palestinian enclave, “obviously the flotilla incident and the
international discourse in its wake expedited the decision.”